


Home is a Feeling

by GentleStorm



Category: Batwoman (TV 2019)
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Bruce moved the glass, F/F, Kate Kane has always been a badass, M/M, Protective Bruce Wayne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 14:50:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20996603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GentleStorm/pseuds/GentleStorm
Summary: You can give a child a lot of things.He gave her Batman.He gave her his home.He gave her home.





	Home is a Feeling

Bruce moved the glass.

He did it without really having to think it through. Clark’s going to give me shit for this, he thinks. But he does it anyway, because he knows how it is to never find home.

Well, he used to.

He didn’t leave because he was tired. He’s been tired for decades. He left for Clark. He left for their dog that’s probably getting too many cookies from an indulgent boyfriend. He left for a lot of reasons, but he came back for one.

Kate wasn’t self-indulgent in her grief. She talked, begged, pleaded until he paid for firefighters to talk her through car wrecks. He remembered her covered in fake glass, tunneling out of smoking vehicles while her dad kept calling him up. He pressed the silencer and shouted back “keep your head down”.

He was the one who took her to aikido three times a week, watched her get her nose broken twice before she left high school.

She sat in his desk chair, not spinning round and round anymore. She sat there when she told him she was gay. She was thirteen. Her eyes told him she was ready to leave, to up and leave him if he showed any sign that he didn’t like her.

He hadn’t known how to say, “me too, god, me too.” He’d only just started falling for Clark, and couldn't even say it to the man in question, let alone his nervous niece that Brucie was a lie.

He touched her shoulder gently and said, “play by your rules, nobody else’s.” He’s never been the best with emotions, but she knows him enough to know what he means.

You can give a grieving child a lot of things. You can give them walls to hide in. You can give them a pillow and a soft blanket. You can hide them from the world, and say everything is safe now.

That’s not Bruce. He lost his parents and fell down a well. He fell so hard and so fast that it felt like flying.

She’d sit with him out on the roof when the countless dinner parties had ended, when he could stop being Brucie, and just be her favorite uncle. She kept breaking into his office and he kept letting her. He never changed his password from Alfred, a password that’s the first thing anybody would try. Anybody who deserved to go breaking into his office, that is.

He took her to aikido. He hugged her when she left for the military, and didn’t say a damn thing about the policies. He never yelled at her when she died her hair bright blue before gallas, or told her to learn French.

“Are you disappointed?” she asked when she came home. She wasn’t crying. She had a tilt to her face that she was ready to pick a fight.

“I would’ve been if you took it lying down,” he says. He thrusts a box of Alfred’s best cookies at her. He means it too, the words and the food.

He will never ask her to be anything she’s not, to be softer, to be less. He’s done enough hiding for his three, now four, person family to want it for her.

He slides the glass away from the switch, knowing that if she was ready, she’d find it. He never told her because well . . . he can be a touch overprotective. Possibly. But he remembers her struggling through a smoking car, getting kicked out because she was never going to let anybody tell her who to be, and decides with reckless, careful thinking that he can give her this.

You can give a child a lot of things.

He gave her Batman.

He gave her his home.

He gave her home.

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, first of all. The frying pan. I am in love with this show and I am going full out on this one episode. I just-WHAT.
> 
> I know this is short. I will add more later, but it is complete for now.


End file.
